Hotel (2001)

July 25, 2003

FILM REVIEW; Film Crews, an Old Resort And a Thirsty Hotel Staff

By ELVIS MITCHELL

Published: July 25, 2003

Mike Figgis's ''Hotel,'' the director's newest confessional-improvisational work, rises and falls on the talents of his performers. The cast includes David Schwimmer, Salma Hayek, Burt Reynolds, Lucy Liu, Saffron Burrows, Julian Sands, John Malkovich and Rhys Ifans, who wins by a mile.

Set in a Venetian hotel on the Lido, the multilayered movie is an amalgam of plots, filmmaking styles and effects. Though finally overwhelmed by a preening lassitude, ''Hotel'' is never less than fascinating, breaking into multiscreen scenarios like Mr. Figgis's 2000 experiment, ''Timecode.'' ''Hotel'' often has the free-form, surly swing of Charles Mingus's thumping improvisations, including a persuasive self-regard that dares you to look away.

Though it revolves primarily around a film crew making a version of John Webster's Jacobean tragedy ''The Duchess of Malfi,'' the movie stretches out for long, competitive turns among the actors. In one of the subplots, Mr. Ifans is the charismatic director and Mr. Schwimmer his scheming producer and right-hand man. The battle for dominance between these two provides a perversely funny duel, with Mr. Schwimmer flailing to keep up with Mr. Ifans's peerless and shameless outbursts of machismo. In the midst of the filming, the director is shot, but Mr. Ifans continues to steal the movie while in a coma -- no small feat, even in a picture as wantonly unstructured as this one.

Just behind them, a documentary team -- led by Salma Hayak and staffed by a bunch just as megalomaniacal as the fictional film's -- captures the morbid self-immolation of the ''Malfi'' crew.

But perhaps the weirdest work force is the hotel staff itself -- which turns out to have a healthy appetite for the guests. In yet another storyline, these vampires stalk the hallways of the hotel. The movie opens with them, and their loose, seductive chatter gradually becomes conspiratorial and horrifying.

The connective threads of the movie come together, albeit loosely, as the filming of the carnage-filled ''Malfi,'' the documentary chronicling the movie and the enthusiasms of the hotel employees continue -- and occasionally converge -- on their macabre paths.

Mr. Figgis seems to have broken ''Hotel'' into two strains, allowing the Americans on the scene to be immature in their flares of intemperate egotism, while the Europeans treat this failing as a benign constant, like an appendix or a receding hairline.

Though ''Hotel,'' which opens in New York and Los Angeles today, comes in a year when several mainstream directors have talked about their impatience with conventional narrative structures, this movie predates much of the recent conversation. I first saw it in Toronto on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, and Mr. Figgis's bravura chaos, lighted like a Renaissance painting, infuriated and confused audiences but kept them talking about the movie afterward.

It's a daunting work because ''Hotel'' catches the characters at varying levels of confidence, and the most dangerous people are the ones who tend to make the least noise. It's probably appropriate that a barking contest erupts among several characters because the movie features attempts at staking physical and psychological territorial claims, sometimes painfully desperate ones.

And Luchino Visconti seems to be as much a touchstone for Mr. Figgis as Jean-Luc Godard. Intriguingly, and perhaps even maddeningly, ''Hotel'' always seems to be in flux -- which is an achievement. Some may say it's like watching wine age in a bottle, but the movie also offers the subtle sense of the flavor changing from minute to minute. In a summer when you can almost hear the sighs of boredom coming from behind the scenes, that's a worthwhile pursuit.

HOTEL

Written and directed by Mike Figgis; director of photography, Patrick Alexander Stewart; music by Mr. Figgis; production designer, Franco Fumagalli; produced by Annie Stewart, Mr. Figgis and Etchie Stroh; released by Moonstone Entertainment and Innovation Film Group. At the Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston Streets, Greenwich Village. Running time: 119 minutes. This film is not rated.